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Earthquakes, Fiber, and Spam
Cut fiber results in spam drop; some telcos see no need for upgrades

The recent 6.7 magnitude quake off the coast of Taiwan resulted in severed fiber and a routing nightmare for many Asian network operators. The fiber redundancy we take for granted in the States (320 GB/s between NY and London) is severely lacking in the Pacific. While the quake renewed calls for added Asia fiber routes, the reality is that soaring demand in Asia was already prompting companies -- some just recovering from the nineties fiber glut -- to act.

Note the $500 million, 11,000 mile route that Verizon Business yesterday reminded everyone they are planning, which will ultimately provide 5 terabits of connectivity between Oregon and China, with stops in Tanshui, Taiwan, and Keoje, South Korea. Of course, not everyone thinks it's worth adding more fiber routes -- the biggest telcos in both South Korea and Taiwan today claimed no upgrades are necessary because earthquakes are "rare" in the Pacific.

Hidden among the expected post-quake dissections of the net's frailty was a discussion over the impact the outage had on overall global spam levels. A network admin for one Wyoming ISP proclaimed they saw a massive drop in spam, complaining that "95% of the traffic we receive from the Asia-Pacific region is spam." One network operator in Hong Kong reminds them that the U.S. is still top dog when it comes to spam output, and the reason all their e-mail from Asia is spam is because the users of their "tiny ISP in Podunk" don't know anyone in Asia.
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ninjatutle
Premium
join:2006-01-02
San Ramon, CA

ninjatutle

Member

.

A network admin for one Wyoming ISP

You're getting info from an admin in Wyoming?

Xfactor1
@comcast.net

Xfactor1

Anon

Re: .

Somehow Admins from Wyoming don't know as much as someone from Cali? Give me a break

dadkins
Can you do Blu?
MVM
join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA

dadkins

MVM

Huh?

"... the biggest telcos in both South Korea and Taiwan today claimed no upgrades are necessary because earthquakes are "rare" in the Pacific."

Uhhh... yeah!
Maybe not *IN* the Pacific... but everywhere *AROUND* the Pacific is very active!

HELLO!!!
»pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynami ··· ire.html
squid7
Premium Member
join:2006-09-02

squid7

Premium Member

Re: Huh?

They may be referring to telco infrastructure damaging e-quakes.

Owlbet
Ignite the Ice
Premium Member
join:2002-09-24
Palmer, AK

1 edit

Owlbet to dadkins

Premium Member

to dadkins
said by dadkins:

Uhhh... yeah!
Maybe not *IN* the Pacific... but everywhere *AROUND* the Pacific is very active!
LOL, David, they've never heard of the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Why is it then that I have a tsunami warning center in my backyard? Well, almost in my backyard. The West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center operated by NOAA is located right in Palmer. The other one for the west coast is located in Ewa Beach, Hawaii.

Once again back on topic, I have noticed a marked decrease in spam in my Yahoo and Hotmail accounts.

FFH5
Premium Member
join:2002-03-03
Tavistock NJ

FFH5

Premium Member

I saw a drop in Spam in my GMAIL accounts

It may be a coincidence, but there has been zero Spam from my Comcast accounts that forward to Gmail and also in any mail directly addressed to Gmail as well. I may as well enjoy it while it lasts.
GhostDoggy
join:2005-05-11
Duluth, GA

GhostDoggy

Member

Re: I saw a drop in Spam in my GMAIL accounts

And when Comcast took over my local Adelphia franchise, I observed an increase in Spam to an unused mailbox. lol

One receives Spam because its passed on by the ISP pop3 mail server. Until everyone rediects it to their ISP's help mailbox (go get'em tiger!), the ISP will only go after highly-complained about abused to their SMTP server.

qdemn7
Smurf in My Loop
Premium Member
join:2003-09-16
Fort Worth, TX

qdemn7

Premium Member

Don't Forget

Many people bought new computers for Christmas. Those new systems may not yet be infected by bots.

Anonymous_
Anonymous
Premium Member
join:2004-06-21
127.0.0.1

Anonymous_

Premium Member

Re: Don't Forget

yay

Cjaiceman
MVM
join:2004-10-12
Castle Rock, WA

Cjaiceman to qdemn7

MVM

to qdemn7
Key word there is YET! Just wait a couple of weeks, then those people will find out that they have to pay for their anti-virus protection.
newyorkslick
join:2001-12-19
Rosedale, NY

1 recommendation

newyorkslick

Member

Hmmm

This must explain why my Hentai BT downloads are so slow

DaSneaky1D
what's up
MVM
join:2001-03-29
The Lou

DaSneaky1D

MVM

Made an observation yesterday about comment spam

»Earthquake related comment spam reduction?

Enjoy it while it lasts...restoration is only about two weeks away.

Anonuser
join:2003-01-03
Milwaukee, WI

Anonuser

Member

.

About that spam, my main business email address gets around 5,000 spam mails/day (of which, all but a dozen-ish make it through thanks to SpamAssasian).

Of that ~5,000, 90% are from Asia(about half are even in Chinese), 5% or so are from the US, and the other 5% are from Europe.

Now, strangely, 90% of the viruses I get in my email are from Europe, and the other 10% are a mix from US and China.

I have many many email accounts, and my main one isnt special by any means, those spam numbers are about the same on all of them from where the spam and viruses come from.
Anonuser

Anonuser

Member

Re: .

Forgot to add, spam box nearly empty since the earthquake!

Mike
Mod
join:2000-09-17
Pittsburgh, PA

Mike

Mod

Re: .

let's have some fun...

Why rebuild?
squid7
Premium Member
join:2006-09-02

squid7 to Anonuser

Premium Member

to Anonuser
I wish ISPs offered overseas email/spam filtering. Prodigy has this back in the day and I used it because I never received OS email but I don't know of any ISP offering it now. For users not expecting OS email it was great for controlling spam.
Kizaki
join:2000-05-19
Fort Myers, FL

Kizaki

Member

Block by country

This is probably why some ISPs like Verizon end up blocking entire countries
GhostDoggy
join:2005-05-11
Duluth, GA

GhostDoggy

Member

Re: Block by country

Using what threshold? If one person in country X sends out a Spam, should your ISP block the entire nation of X? Now that would amount to a no-Internet condition as they would most likely be blocking your native country, too.
Kizaki
join:2000-05-19
Fort Myers, FL

Kizaki

Member

Only Verizon would know, I have no idea what they use. There was some posts here a while ago about them blocking Europe. Either someone at Verizon made a mistake. Or they blocked them as a quick tempfix to mass email viruses coming from there. I just know it has happened in the past. Even the company I work for, once blocked China and Taiwan because of the amount of spam coming from those two countries.
tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Brooklyn, NY

tmc8080

Member

build it, then find a use for it...

The point is: build it, then someone will find a use for it.. eventually! Then you'll be thankful that you laid extra throughput for Asia Pacific.. Just wish some of those terabit lines were in the USA for residential use, not the table scraps we get for upload throughput! Just be careful exactly where you place these cables... fault lines are not good places to lay cable, so you need to build in redundancy so that segments can be easily repaired/switched in the event of an emergency/breakdown.

I want to see the day that we get todays hard-drive speeds over the internet, with virtually no latency..!

Even from USA to Asia... and back!
Can't do a speed test and see piddly little speeds in the dsl range, that totally sucks!
gsm8
join:2004-09-29
Renton, WA

gsm8

Member

fiber

well this explains why almost all the .com.cn sites i use are offline for me. It also explains why everyone on my msn list in china has not been on